Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer assured the community that its protocol has no vulnerabilities after an incident where nearly $6 million in tokens were stolen from an investor.
On Oct. 4, the EigenLayer team announced they were investigating an “unapproved selling activity” concerning a wallet ending in “f10D.” This wallet address sold about 1.6 million of EigenLayer’s EIGEN tokens, valued at approximately $5.7 million.
Following EigenLayer’s announcement, Etherscan quickly marked the address as under investigation.
On Oct. 5, EigenLayer released a community update stating that the unapproved token-selling incident was the result of a hack. The team reported that a malicious attacker compromised an email thread involving an investor’s token transfer into custody.
Due to this attack, the investor’s 1.6 million tokens were transferred to the attacker. EigenLayer explained:
“The attacker sold these stolen EIGEN tokens via a decentralized swap platform and transferred stablecoins to centralized exchanges.”
Meanwhile, the protocol indicated that they have already communicated with the relevant platforms and authorities. “We are in contact with these platforms and law enforcement. A portion of the funds have already been frozen,” EigenLayer added.
While the tokens were stolen through a hack, the EigenLayer team reassured the community that the incident was isolated and did not impact its broader ecosystem. The team clarified that the compromise was not related to any onchain functionality and stated there is no known vulnerability in the protocol or token contracts.
EigenLayer also mentioned in the community update that they would continue their investigation and provide updates as more information becomes available.
On Oct. 1, the EIGEN token was unlocked. Following this, it traded at $3.85 on Binance, giving it a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of about $6.5 billion. According to data aggregator CoinMarketCap, this valuation placed the token at the 94th spot by market capitalization.
As of Oct. 5, the coin information website indicated that EIGEN trades at around $3.38, placing its FDV at $5.6 billion and ranking it at the 99th position in the overall crypto market capitalization rankings.